Achromatopsia
by preciouslemons
Summary: A Charmander wakes up in the middle of the forest with no memories, injured and confused. With the help of her headstrong Totodile partner, she searches for clues to her past-but when a familiar face appears in her dreams, she realizes that her past is searching for her, too. Episodic one-shot anthology, x-posted from AO3.


Someone tickled her skin. She wasn't sure who, but someone was definitely messing with her, so she opened her eyes to see who it was. Properly reprimanding someone required their name.

At first, she wasn't quite sure what she was looking at. The world twirled around her in a cloying waltz of color and light. It made her head hurt. Nausea crawled around in her stomach like a restless centipede. She moved her hand to shield her eyes against the harsh firelight.

Pain shot through her arm. She followed it with her mind, through her shoulder and back. Her whole body was sore-though she couldn't remember why. A cocktail of emotions pooled in her chest. Confusion, fear, both feelings she could understand. Those are givens, she thought, _I have no idea where I am_. Joy, hope, determination, she couldn't quite understand. Those ones, she realized, those ones are unexpected.

The colors charmed her even as her head pounded with the effort of comprehending them. They were more vibrant than any she had seen before-indeed, as the world slowed to a gentle spin, she understood that it was all _brighter_ than she'd experienced, too.

The tickling sensation returned, though no one was around to touch her. The environment seemed to sway in time with the gentle caress of nothing. She determined it to be wind. So if this is wind, then the firelight isn't firelight at all but _sunlight_ , she thought. Happiness gripped her to the very core of her being and she let her hand drop from her eyes to look at the sun as one would a flame.

Pain seared her head as though she'd been speared through each eye. Her eyelids squeezed shut, tears threatening to spring up. _Wh-what… why does it hurt so much to look…?_ Sadness added itself to the stormcloud of emotions swirling inside her.

"Hey Charmander," said a voice, too close, definitely talking to someone else. She ignored them, cracking her eyes open to make another attempt at assessing her surroundings.

A damp appendage latched onto her arm. "Charmander, you okay?"

Before she could open her mouth, the appendage shook her. Every nerve ending in her body exploded. A groan escaped her.

"Arceus, you're hurt!" She could've laughed. What a strange thing to say. _You're hurt._

The creature mumbled something unintelligible before leaning over her, and she finally got a good look at them. A crocodilian, with almond eyes and a smooth snout, two sharp teeth sticking out from their mouth-she knew this Pokemon, she thought. Isn't that a Totodile?

"Hi," she tried to say, though all that came out was a short whimper as the Totodile lifted her from the ground. White spots bloomed in her field of vision. Tears rolled down her cheeks as the colors drained away.

The only light source when she awoke next was a fire, crackling in a small brazier in the corner of the room. She pulled herself up. Sparks of pain hopped across her skin and through her bones.

Blearily, she stumbled toward the tiny flame and patted it out.

 _That's better._ She fell against the brazier, one arm hanging over the side. Exhaustion made the tip of her tail tingle.

 _Wait… tail?_ Her head swiveled around. A lizard-like tail dragged along the floor behind her, a tiny flame spouting from the tip. Its base connected right to her rump.

She let go of the brazier, her body slumping to the floor.

"Afternoon, sleepyhead."

The Charmander's eyes flew open. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, her back against the wall.

Warily, she surveyed the area. A doorway, empty of a door, yawned open on the opposite side of the room. A bag hung on the hook just inside the doorframe. To her right, a bookshelf and several storage crates lined the wall. To her left, a bed stood just under a window. The brazier she'd put out earlier lay just beyond the cot.

The Totodile from before had laid out piles of books in front of the shelf and was sitting among them.

"Found you collapsed next to the brazier this mornin'." He picked up a tome. "Seemed like you put it out."

Charmander nodded. Everything in here was colorful too, she noted with a secret delight.

"Why so? Was it botherin' you?"

Straw poked her legs and feet as she shifted to a more comfortable sitting position. After a pause, she replied, "Instinct."

"Kind of a weird instinct for a Charmander, tail-flame and all," he replied, scrutinizing the book's spine.

"I was different before." She gathered her tail closer to her.

"Different… how?"

She scrunched her nose, fiddling with the tail-flame. It was bigger now, she noted. Her body didn't hurt nearly as much as before, either. She recalled something about how a Charmander's health relates to its tail-flame. The piece wasn't quite all there, however.

"I was bigger, and I didn't have a tail. I had… one more finger." Charmander held up her hand, wiggling her digits.

"Never heard of a bigger Pokemon evolving into a smaller Pokemon," the Totodile rumbled, looking up from his organizing.

"It wasn't evolution." This felt like a fact to her.

"Sounds weird."

The tail-flame flared suddenly as irritation washed through her chest. How dare he brush her off, she thought. She opened her mouth to hurl a sharp remark when he spoke again.

"You said before?"

Confusion frayed the edges of her annoyance. "What?"

"You said 'I was different before.' What does before mean?"

Charmander grimaced, letting her tail drape across her knees.

"Before whenever I was wherever I was when you found me. Before the brazier."

"In the clearing, yesterday? In the woods?"

A fragment of understanding snapped into place in her mind. Some of the swirling colors yesterday must have been trees. The dark ones, maybe. Their shape matched those she'd seen before, she was sure.

Charmander nodded.

"How'd you get there?" the Totodile pressed. She simply shrugged, crunching straw with her fists.

"I don't remember much," she said.

"You don't sound too broken up about it," Totodile observed.

"Can't be broken up about what I don't remember." That wasn't quite the truth, she realized, remembering the bewildering cascade of emotions upon opening her eyes the previous day. The fear, the joy, and the grief skittered over her heart.

"You remember your name, at least?"

She shook her head.

"Hm." Charmander looked up at him. "Used to know a Braixen named Kindle. It's yours if you want it."

"Kindle," she repeated, tasting the moniker on her tongue.

"Nice to meetcha, Kindle. I'm Muir." He shot her a genuine grin she would've struggled not to return. "Pokemon 'round here are usually named something that makes sense."

Kindle nodded and pushed herself to her feet. Her hands itched, like they were telling her to do something-though what, she wasn't sure.

"What are you doing?" she asked Muir.

"Reorganizin'. Used up the last of my Oran berries on you this morning so I had to rearrange my berries. Couldn't stop once I started so I'm redoin' the bookshelf, too." He slapped the spine of a dusty volume to wedge it further into its place.

"Can I help?"

He laughed. "Sure. I'm organizing them by color, if you want to help."

Kindle squatted next to him. "How does that work?"

Muir handed her a book, head tilted in question. "Like… a rainbow. Y'know? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet?"

The Charmander stared at him, not comprehending. "What is a 'rainbow?'"

Muir's jaw opened and closed, as if he was trying to speak, but nothing came forth for several seconds.

"Guess you weren't kiddin' about the memory thing," he mumbled. "Just put colors together if they look the same."

Kindle nodded. They organized for several hours. The task felt like a slog until Muir began to teach her the names of the color of each book. With every new color she learned, the contentedness in her heart grew a little more.

"We should probably take a break," Muir suggested, his toothy maw opening wide with a yawn. "It's gettin' a little late."

Kindle's heart began to race as she noticed everything had been dusted with a new color. "Wh-what's happening?" She scrambled to her feet and dropped into an instinctual fighting stance.

"Sunset. Relax," he said, putting his hand on her arm. She stepped away.

"Sunset," she repeated. The word felt familiar.

"Yeah. The sun sets, then it rises again in the morning. Happens every day."

Kindle frowned. "Every day?"

She approached the entrance of the room, discovering it led outside. A bridge hung over a moat that surrounded the small building. Hesitantly, she stepped out onto it, careful to hold her tail high. The wooden planks felt gritty on her feet.

The Charmander raised her gaze to the sky and her breath caught in her throat.

"Pretty, innit?" Muir asked, stepping out beside her.

Awe had stolen noise from her mouth. Her jaw opened and closed several times before she finally mustered a few words.

"It's… beautiful…" Tears dripped from her chin.

Silence stretched between them as they watched the sun sink below the horizon. Muir turned away as the last sliver of soft sunlight disappeared, slipping back into the house.

"Hungry?" he called. Kindle scrubbed her tear-stained face and tore herself away from the spectacular view.

Muir tossed an apple to her as she stepped inside. He turned back to rummage through the storage crates.

"Thank you," Kindle hummed. She plopped down on the cobblestone floor to enjoy the fruit. The Totodile hunkered down next to her.

"You really never seen a sunset before?"

"Dunno," she said around a mouthful of apple. "I want to see it again."

"Guess I do sorta take that stuff for granted."

A few moments of quiet settled between them. Kindle watched her tail-flame dance and flicker, fascinated. She'd learned earlier that the color of fire was called 'orange.' Or perhaps 'red.' Come to think, she couldn't actually remember which one-but it reminded her of the sunset. Warm comfort settled over her whole body.

"Hey Kindle," Muir said, interrupting her thoughts. She met his eyes, tilting her head in question.

"Do you have any plans after you get your bearings?"

Kindle hadn't quite thought about it yet. "Not really. I want to figure out what happened to me and what I was before I became… this, but I don't know how to go about that, or where to start."

The Totodile nodded, popping the core of the apple in his mouth. He seemed to take a moment to consider something.

"I got an idea."

"Spit it out."

"You wanna form a rescue team with me?" he asked after a few seconds. "At least until you get an idea of how to do what you need to."

"Can I stay here if I say yes?"

He took a moment to consider it. "Hm… S'pose so. We could make this our team base."

"Yes." Kindle wasn't sure exactly what a rescue team might entail, but if it was anything like she was imagining, she could certainly get behind the idea. Helping Pokemon in need sounded right.

"Really?" A light shone in Muir's eyes that Kindle hadn't quite seen in the few hours she'd spent with him. His excitement made her smile. "Great! I'll get us registered tomorrow!"

As they settled in to sleep for the night, Kindle's singular thought was of the way the sunset changed the landscape.


End file.
